You Have to Be Careful in the Land of the Free

jeremiah Brown, A Scottish Immigrant In His Early Thirties, Has Lived In The United States For Twelve Years. He Has Moved As Many Times, From The East Coast To The West Coast And Back Again, All In The Hope His Luck Would Change. To Add To His Restlessness And Indecision, He Now Has A Nonrefundable Ticket To Glasgow To Visit His Mother For The First Time In Seven Years. The Question Is, Will The Visit Help Him Get Over The Pain Of Separation From A Woman He Met And Loved In New York And With Whom He Had A Little Girl, Or Will It Make It Worse? In This Rich, Funny, Superbly Crafted Novel, Kelman Has Once Again Created A Memorable Character-compulsive, Obsessive, Self-doubting, Beer-loving, And Utterly Engaging-and A Singular Portrait Of An Immigrant's America

the New York Times - Dwight Garner

the Good News Is That This Novel Happens To Be Very, Very Fine -- [kelman's] Best Since how Late It Was, And In Some Ways His Most Angrily Profound Book, Period. It's Not Just A First-rate Drinking Novel And A First-rate Elegiac Failure Novel And A First-rate Fred Exley-ish Novel About Loserdom (loserdom Being The Song Kelman Was Born To Sing). It May Also Be The Best -- It's Certainly The Most Paranoid -- Book We've Had Thus Far About The Political And Social Reverberations Of 9/11 In This Country.